Today -100: July 20, 1926: Doing the best with the material left

Édouard Herriot succeeds in forming a cabinet, the 14th since 1920, which will surely last a super-long time. It’s not the government of aaalllll the parties he promised (not all deputies from even his own Radical Party back it), and most of the major French leaders remain outside. The NYT’s very sceptical Edwin James notes that Herriot’s invitation was refused by Poincaré, Briand, Tardieu, Marin, and Barthou: “Therefore Herriot has probably done the best he could with the material left.”  It doesn’t inspire confidence in the financial sector and the franc continues its plunge. Radio stations are prohibited from broadcasting exchange rates and market prices, to prevent the spreading of panic.

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Today -100: July 19, 1926: In which is revealed what is the greatest threat to the republic

Sen. William Borah (R-Idaho), hoping to ride a dry wave into the White House (to use a terrible metaphor), says the only way to take Prohibition out of politics is to enforce it. Attempts to repeal it, he says, are really attacks on the Constitution and nullification and are the greatest threat to the republic.

Édouard Herriot will attempt to form a government consisting of aaalllll the parties. He’s having some difficulty accomplishing that.

Texas Gov. Miriam “Ma” Ferguson is still leaving almost all her campaigning for re-election to her husband, impeached former governor James F., who is giving her credit for removing evolution from school textbooks and says Attorney Gen. Dan Moody “runs with the Ku Klux Klan at night” (he does not, but James wants to keep the Klan issue before the public so he can use it as a cudgel when he runs for US senator).

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Today -100: July 18, 1926: Boycotting ice cream? Ice cream?

The French Chamber of Deputies refuses Finance Minister Joseph Caillaux’s demand for fiscal dictatorial powers, 288-243. Aristide Briand’s Cabinet resigns. After formally resigning at the Presidential Palace, Briand says “Now I am a free man and I am going fishing tomorrow.”

The archbishop of Mexico City and others call for an economic boycott to start when the Calles decree comes into effect on the 31st. They are to refrain from coaches, fruit, ice cream, movies, lottery tickets, and non-religious schools, use as little electricity as possible, etc. etc.

Lithuania’s newish Populist-Socialist government lifts the 4-year-old state of siege, ends censorship of the mails, and releases all political prisoners.

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Today -100: July 17, 1926: Of rapes and marbles

Italy’s Fascist press is pointing to the demands of French Finance Minister Joseph Caillaux and Belgium’s King Albert for dictatorial powers to deal with the fall of their respective francs as demonstrating the failure of parliamentarism and the rise of fascist methods.

The Kenya Legislative Council passes a law imposing the death penalty for assaults on white women by native men. Black men can still rape black women with close to impunity, the Archdeacon of Kavirondo notes in letter to the London Times; last year a magistrate refused to convict in one case, saying rape was so common it was almost a tribal custom.

Alexander Philadelpheus, the most prominent Greek archaeologist, is campaigning for the British Museum to return the Elgin Marbles.

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Today -100: July 16, 1926: Which is the best kind of dictator

Albert, King of the Belgians, is “expected to be a good-natured dictator”.

The Aimee Semple McPherson grand jury hearings figure it out:  a gas station attendant in Salinas identifies her and Kenneth Ormiston, a former operator for her temple’s radio station, as having gotten gas 11 days after her alleged kidnapping. From there, they checked into a San Luis Obispo hotel (no, not the Madonna Inn, that didn’t exist yet) under false names. Other witnesses place her at locations that don’t fit her narrative.

I.F. Andrews, who was the drummer boy who played taps at Lincoln’s funeral, dies. After the war, he became a professional musician.

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Today -100: July 15, 1926: Duels!

The number of duels has been increasing in Fascist Italy. Yesterday or the day before, Mussolini’s brother Arnoldo challenged some general. Today, Luigi de Alfonso, honorary consul-general of the Fascist militia, which is a rather odd title, fights former under-secretary to the Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs Giuseppe Caradonna with sabers, getting rather slashed up.

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Today -100: July 14, 1926: Of war debt and foolish notions

A new dictator I was not expecting: Albert, King of the Belgians, is granted powers by the Chamber of Representatives to legislate by decree to deal with inflation, taxes, really anything economy-related, for six months. Even Socialist senators support this.

France and Britain come to an agreement on the former’s war debt to the latter. It’s quite lenient, cancelling 3/5 of France’s nominal debt, possibly Chancellor Winston Churchill setting an example for the US to follow with respect to Britain’s war debt to it. Britain did reject France’s attempt to link its annual payments (for 62 years) to the reparations it receives from Germany, though Churchill does say that if Germany defaults, he’ll reconsider France’s payments.

John D. Rockefeller Jr. refuses to let press photographers take pictures of his sons for fear it would put “foolish notions into their heads.”

Germany bans The Battleship Potemkin for being historically inaccurate in portraying Tsarist forces shooting innocent civilians during the 1905 Revolution. 

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Today -100: July 13, 1926: Of shells and Bells

In Dover, NJ, near the area affected by the ammunition depot explosions, a man allowed to return to his home (thought to be outside the danger zone) to pick up clothing finds a 60-pound shell which fell down the chimney and came to rest, without exploding, in his stove.

Elvia Carrillo Puerto stands for the Mexican Congress, loses. It seems likely that women aren’t legally allowed to hold office anyway. She had been elected to the Yucatán Congress in 1923, where women’s suffrage was enacted that year, but left the state in a bit of a hurry after her brother, the governor, was assassinated in 1924. Women got the vote national elections in 1953 (effective with the 1955 elections).

Chief movie censor Will Hays introduces a policy that no movie shall encourage “the slightest disrespect for law,” especially, well you can guess which law in particular. So, no scenes of drinking or liquor-manufacturing, and scenes of intoxication only if absolutely necessary for the plot.

Gertrude Bell,  archaeologist, “Orientalist,” adviser to British governments on Arab matters, mountain-climber, adviser to King Faisal, and a founder of the Women’s National Anti-Suffrage League, dies in Baghdad at 57 of an overdose of sleeping pills. Here’s a passage in her obit I could have done without: “Despite her adventuresome life, she remained charmingly feminine and old-fashioned and avoided publicity. No matter how strenuous her days of exploring were, it was said of her that she always dressed for dinner in a Rue de la Paix gown.”

Publisher Henry Holt & Co. admits removing chapters on evolution from the textbook Biology for Beginners in editions sent to Texas, in compliance with state rules.

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Today -100: July 12, 1926: Of boom booms and the ruin of France

Secretary of War Dwight Davis inspects the Lake Denmark, NJ ammunition depot, occasionally taking cover during ongoing explosions and wandering closer than seems prudent to unexploded shells near raging fires. He opines that when they rebuild (and locals have some opinions about that), depot buildings should be a little further apart.

In Paris 20,000 veterans of the Great War, led by cripples and the blind, march to protest the war debt settlement with the US, laying a marble plaque at the statue of George Washington in a subtle reminder of all the aid the French gave the US back in the day. The plaque reads in part, “After the deceptions of peace the proposed debt settlement would consecrate the ruin of France and the loss of her independence.” The government forbade the parade but couldn’t stop it.

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Today -100: July 11, 1926: A little song, a little dance...

Someone poisoned VP Charles Dawes’s new dog Merigo in Evanston. Not directed at him personally but part of a rash of dog-poisonings.

The Lake Denmark, NJ ammunition depot, the Navy’s largest, blows up real good. A lightning strike sets off millions of pounds of explosives, killing 19. The fire, which also destroys many buildings, is ongoing and the explosions, armor-piercing shells and the like, will continue for days. Windows were blown out miles away.

Similarly, a soda fountain explodes in Binghamton in a freak carbonation accident; two may die.

A Ku Klux Klan children’s home opens in Mannsville, NY.

Headline of the Day -100 For a Story I Definitely Won’t Be Reading:

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Today -100: July 10, 1926: Coup coup coup

Portugal has a coup against the coup government which came to power in the coup in May. President Gen. Gomes da Costa is arrested and will be banished to the Azores. He precipitated this coup by firing his ministers of foreign affairs, the colonies, and the interior; and several other ministers resigned in sympathy.

Some dude in clerical garb has been selling tickets to the Aimee Semple McPherson grand jury hearings for two bucks. There is, of course, no such thing as a ticket to a grand jury hearing.

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Today -100: July 9, 1926: Of radio, repeated moral delinquencies, haunted palaces, ideologies, embarrassed jurors, garrottings, and sheik nipples

The Justice Dept rules that Commerce Sec Herbert Hoover does not have the power to regulate radio without Congress giving him that power. There are 600 pending applications for new stations (and 530 existing stations) and not enough wavelengths, but now there’s no one to stop stations opening up anyway or to stop them using frequencies currently assigned to Canadian stations.

King Ferdinand of Romania says the reason Prince Carol renounced the throne last December was that Ferdinand forced him to because of his “repeated moral delinquencies” (i.e., he was fucking around).

The Polish Cabinet gives coup leader Marshal Józef Piłsudski use of the Belweder Palace, which is purportedly haunted. Piłsudski says he ain’t afraid of no ghosts.

Mexican elections are going on, along with violent clashes, as is the custom. 9 people including a congressional candidate are killed in Dolores Hidalgo, not the first one in this election cycle.

As the Italian lira continues to fall, Mussolini declares a one-year moratorium on knighthoods and other honors. Something about Italians having to live in a simpler fashion.

As the French franc continues to fall, Finance Minister Joseph Caillaux demands that his stabilization plan, which includes giving him lots of new powers and going ahead with the deal to pay off the war debt to the US, be fully implemented, or they’ll have to accept Socialist Party leader Léon Blum’s capital levy plan. “Ideology, ideology, your capital levy, Monsieur Blum!”

US Attorney Gen. John Sargent complains about people violating Prohibition laws; he’s not happy with people criticizing them either: “The authority he [the boozer] is defying in the one matter wherein his individual inclination differs with it is the same and only authority that stands between him and despotism of some one stronger than he.” Speaking at the dedication of a war memorial in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, he tells such Dry Law scoffers to “consider the effect of conduct more threatening to the nation and its institutions than any European nation ever was.” Soldiers, he says, “gave their lives for discipline, for obedience to law”. I wonder if they really knew that they were fighting the Hun for Prohibition?

In the federal trial in NYC of mobster Big Bill Dwyer for violations of those very Prohibition laws, they’re having difficulty finding jurors who aren’t personally opposed to Prohibition and who wouldn’t be “embarrassed” to sit on a jury.

Aimee Semple McPherson tells the LA County grand jury her story of her alleged abduction, after refusing to promise to keep her testimony secret. However, we don’t know, yet, what that testimony is. A nurse from the Arizona hospital at which ASM stayed after her reappearance says she sure didn’t look like she’d walked 20 miles through a desert; no sunburn, dehydration, etc.

Cuba has its first execution in 20 years. Salvador Aguilera, who murdered his aunt, is garroted. Two prisoners are assigned, or possibly volunteer, to be the executioners, in exchange for shorter sentences. One gets hysterical, the other is a black American, a veteran of the Battle of San Juan Hill in jail for robbery. Aguilera is left in the garrote 4 hours after his death, as was the custom. I did an image search on “garrote,” and I do not recommend it. The device was introduced to Cuba by the Spanish, because of course it was.

Rudolph Valentino’s film Son of the Sheik, a sequel to The Sheik, premieres.

Do you dare gaze upon my nipples?

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Today -100: July 8, 1926: Harpies preying on the peaceful, decent community are the worst kind of harpies

A Passaic, New Jersey “Citizens’ Committee” plans a campaign to counter the propaganda of the textile strikers (24 weeks into the strike), which claims that the workers live in poverty, the police are brutal, and the judges tyrannical. Can’t imagine where they got that idea. They describe strike leader Albert Weisbrod et al as “harpies preying on the peaceful, decent community” of Passaic and, naturally, as communists. Infant mortality is relatively low!, they brag. Weisbrod responds that the Committee members are charlatans, Ku Klux Klan members and “labor haters who have never raised their fingers to help the workers of Passaic and yet have fattened on the bodies of the workers for many years.”

Gen. Lincoln C. Andrews won’t step down as the head of federal Prohibition enforcement after all.

French Finance Minister Joseph Caillaux’s request for Parliament to grant him special powers to deal with the franc is not going over well.

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Today -100: July 7, 1926: Potatoes or elections?

As part of its economy program, the Italian government wants people to eat potatoes instead of pasta.

Oh, and it’s canceling elections for every level of government. 

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Today -100: July 6, 1926: In which is revealed what creates the character of the nation

At the Sesquicentennial Exposition, Pres. Coolidge says it is not “the enactment but the observance of laws that creates the character of the nation.” When you hear a statement like that and know that it’s about Prohibition even though he doesn’t say it’s about Prohibition, maybe you’ve just got a bad law on your hands. Coolidge is criticized for downplaying the role in the writing of the Declaration of Independence of Thomas Jefferson, whose ideas Coolidge says came from preachers.

I could  swear yesterday the NYT was describing the Ku Klux Klan’s Klorero (meeting or rally or  key party or something) on Long Island as a bust, but today 3,000 kluxers parade through Mineola, wearing the Klan bathrobe but not the mask, in oh so grudging obedience to New York law. Onlookers throw coins into flags held horizontally by women kluxers. Floats represent the Spirit of ‘76 and A Little Red Schoolhouse™, with the words “Keep the Bible in the Public Schools.” Cause you have to use something to prop up that uneven table leg, I guess.

A French mechanic invents a flying bicycle.

Pope Pius asks Catholics all over the world to pray for Mexico to stop persecuting Catholics on August 1st, which is the festival of... St. Peter-in-Chains (I don’t even want to know).

Mussolini follows the economy program he’s imposing on Italy by canceling his plans to visit parts of the country and colonies, calling them luxuries which can’t be afforded just now.

The BBC, which has begun John Reith’s task of deciding how English should be spoken, considers the voices of 90% of stage comedians unsuitable for broadcast. It does approve of the voices of the Prince of Wales and George Bernard Shaw, who read out one of his plays. If this makes you wonder what GBS sounded like, here’s a quite clear recording from 1929:

I’d call that accent Mid-Irish-Sea.

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Today -100: July 5, 1926: Of swimming Swedes, medicine balls, and assassinations

Even though the Republicans correctly fear losing House and Senate seats in November, Coolidge is likely to refrain from campaigning altogether.

Coolidge’s 54th birthday was on the 4th of July, by the way.

There have been a lot of drownings in Sweden of late (c.340 per year), so they’re taking harsh measures to force everyone to learn to swim: no teachers who can’t swim, no students (the article says boys, could that be true?) passing exams without also passing swim exams, no government officials who can’t swim, etc.

Crowds crowd (as crowds will do) the beaches at Coney Island and Atlantic City for the 4th. Gov. Al Smith visits Coney and “played with a medicine ball on the beach for a while.” I’ll bet he did, I’ll bet he did. Rather embarrassingly, the NYT names bathers who had to be rescued from drowning.

French police drop charges against 2 Spaniards they’d arrested for allegedly planning to assassinate King Alfonso, but retain charges for carrying false passports and real guns. Feels like there’s more to this story.

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Today -100: July 4, 1926: Your sister wears knickers

Mexico issues the Calles Decree, which confiscates church property; bans non-Mexican-born ministers from doing minister stuff; bans non-secular teaching and religious primary schools; bans proselytizing to minors; bans ministers from meeting together, in public or private; bans them wearing religious outfits or symbols when out and about; gives the government ownership of all the churches; bans ministers from complaining publicly about any of this and religious newspapers can’t comment on any of this. Plus a whole lot more. It goes into effect on the 31st.

Wayne Wheeler of the Anti-Saloon League begs the Senate committee investigating election spending not to release the names of the League’s donors.

London sees its first suffragist parade since the war, demanding the voting age be by equalized between the sexes. Emmeline Pankhurst, Lady Rhondda, and MP Ellen Wilkinson participate.

Charles Ponzi, who was on the run but was evidently captured without it making the NYT, telegraphs Pres. Coolidge asking for clemency and to be deported to Italy, which he calls a “compromise.” He’s also cabled Mussolini for help.

Headline of the Day -100: 

In a “former” saloon in the Bronx, the victim casts aspersions on women who wear knickers. The Tennesseehoovian says My sister wears knickers and she is a good girl! It escalates from there.

Marshal Józef Piłsudski, the Polish dictator, was reported last week as resting in a sanatorium, but now says that was a ruse to cover for his carrying out an inspection of border troops. It’s unclear why such a ruse was required.

The French government rejects a request (it is not said from whom) to send the Mona Lisa to the Sesquicentennial Exhibition. 

Greek dictator Theodoros Pangalos proved unable to dictate the length of women’s skirts. His decree (issued January, I think) required skirts to be a maximum of 35 centimeters from the ground, with punishment falling on the father or husband of the offender. The decree wasn’t popular among women or indeed the police, who didn’t want to be in the skirt-measuring business, so 2 women skirt-measurers were hired. Then the cops arrested a woman who turned out to be the daughter of a Court of Appeal judge. Her trial was so unpopular that Pangalos has now rescinded the decree.

At the 2nd Nazi Party congress, the Grossdeutsche Jugendbewegung are renamed the Hitlerjugend.

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Today -100: July 3, 1926: Of vares, Rothschilds, and governors-generalses

Gen. Lincoln Andrews, the federal Dry Czar, threatens to resign if Congress doesn’t pass the laws he demands giving him way more powers. Congress rejected his plan to hire retired military officers for prohibition work (without affecting their retirement pay). The NYT says this is because congresscritters considered those jobs patronage fodder, but I can think of other reasons not to staff a policing agency with military types.

The Senate Rules Committee proposes banning any senator whose campaign spent more than $25,000 with their knowledge, including in the primary. This is aimed at Rep. William Scott Vare, Republican candidate for the Senate from Pennsylvania.

The French Chamber of Deputies refuses to seat Baron Maurice de Rothschild as deputy for the Hautes-Alpes Department because he spent too much money in his election in 1924. He’s been attending the Chamber since that election but without being allowed to vote. The campaign to unseat him was led by Communists. He’ll be re-elected anyway in October’s elections.

Governor General of Canada, Julian “Bungo” Byng dissolves Parliament, as he refused to do for Mackenzie king last week, after the Meighen government failed that confidence vote yesterday. Byng is criticized for letting many bills which were passed by Parliament lapse without royal assent, including 44 divorce bills. Mackenzie King and the Liberals will fight the election partly on the question of Canadian autonomy and Byng’s interference (Byng’s term of office expires shortly anyway).

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Today -100: July 2, 1926: Of tigers & confidence

NY Gov. Al Smith evidently has his own zoo at the governor’s mansion, including an increasingly aggressive “Tammany Tiger” which he can’t persuade any real zoo to take. So he has it shot.

In other news, Al Smith can go fuck himself.

The very new Canadian government of Arthur Meighen loses a vote of confidence in Parliament by one vote.

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Today -100: July 1, 1926: Women must fight their own battles

NY Gov. Alfred E. Smith, asked if he’ll be running for re-election in 4 months, says, “I am not going to think anything more about that for a while. ... This is vacation time.” Tammany Hall is considering Robert F. Wagner of the NY Supreme Court as a replacement if Smith doesn’t run.

Spain’s King Alfonso and Queen Victoria have been vacationing in France, where police thwart a plot to assassinate him.

So what happened to the car in which the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Duchess Sophie were assassinated in 1914? Well, it was still in Sarajevo when the Great War broke out, so Yugoslavia wound up in possession of it and for a time the governor of Bosnia used it but after some incidents he decided it was haunted. A merchant bought it but also decided it was haunted and was driving to a possible buyer when it turned over and killed him. It then passed to a series of people and has now been bought for pennies by a Dr. Ragibkavara. Are you as skeptical about this story as I am? Good. (Update: Right, none of that is true. None of it.)

George Bernard Shaw, who has rejected invitations to address meetings in support of reducing the voting age for British women from 30 to 21, has his secretary respond, “Mr. Shaw desires me to say that women must fight their own battles. He is not to be lured into the ridiculous position of their male champion.” I respect that position but... imagine the speech he would give.

Fascist newspapers in Italy are praising the government order to reduce all newspapers to 6 pages, saying most journalism is just a waste of paper. Augusto Turati, Secretary General of the Fascist Party, says each province will have a single newspaper, “in which will be published the party’s orders, and the political acts of Fascism will be briefly illustrated. All the rest of the space will be devoted to things which are being constructed and work which is being carried out.” 

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